


forbid me to stand tall

by torrentialTriages



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Impostor Syndrome, PTSD, Question Mark??, light throndphrim, sih 18 spoilers, uhhh also a(n un)healthy heap of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 15:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17900984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrentialTriages/pseuds/torrentialTriages
Summary: Ephrim's brain in the years following the New Archives is a boat.





	forbid me to stand tall

**Author's Note:**

> (dabs) relistening to sih 18 today made me realize ephrim probably still has a lot of unresolved ptsd symptoms bc theres no such thing as therapy in hieron /j but i still have a lot of unresolved ptsd feelings myself so here we are. i dont know if its good i wrote this right into the ao3 textbox. you tell me,  
> he's also coming into this assuming no one will believe that hes having a hard time bc of it so idk if thats something that bothers u you dont have to read it. he does get validated tho
> 
> title from eyes as candles by passion pit

Ephrim's brain in the years following the New Archives is a boat - he's past suspecting there's a leak because he keeps having to bail water, eternally alone on an infinite sea, just him and whatever problems are plaguing him but he can see the water mounting with something not quite dread and not quite alarm and he  _knows_ there's a leak but he can't take the time to plug it or he'll capsize for real when his back is turned and he can't do that when he's depended on by so many, he just  _can't._  It's unacceptable.

In the meantime, he keeps a record. He chews on the inside of his cheek as he writes laboriously at night, left hand cramping in protest as his right hovers nervously at his side. The water keeps coming in, weighing in his brain, and - and okay, he's terrified that it's just not real, that if (when) he drowns in his head people won't understand, tell him he's a weak coward abandoning them because he keeps going back to specific moments in time and maybe he is being soft, he doesn't know, he doesn't have an outside perspective here, but maybe writing it down (slowly, crudely, but he's getting better at it, don't rush) will give him a foundation, a pile of proof to be believed from. Maybe.

These are things Ephrim notes about himself, after:

 

**fig. a.**

Metal clinks.

It sounds like a mundane fact on paper, from anywhere but Ephrim's head. Metal striking metal clinks, and the pitch varies depending on the objects, but on the way to the Last University, Ephrim and Throndir and Corsica and the Unstill and the Archivists and the Velasians and the Rosemerrow refugees and who knows who else stop for the evening. And it's still bright out, yes, brighter than Del and Bri have ever glowed for them the whole winter and somehow brighter than the fake sun at its peak, but Ephrim looks up from dismounting from his horse and fully realizes  _right, real sunsets are red and orange and purple too, bleeding across the sky_ right as someone else gets off their own horse too close to his ears and they jostle a buckle against the harness or something like that and all Ephrim hears is  _whoosh, clink_ when his heart jolts and next thing he knows he's on the ground and that shout in his ears is his own.

Everyone within earshot is staring. They stare with mixed concern, alarm, and bewilderment and his chest heaves, struggling to rationalize it, not knowing whether he's permanently sabotaged any reliability as a leader he seems to have these days. The person who spurred this flight response looks around above him as if they'll see oncoming danger. No, no danger, just Ephrim and his inability to just  _stop thinking about things,_ just stop thinking about Samothes for  _once,_ but he's still in the forge, he's still got his hackles raised in the face of that cruel lofty dismissive smile, can still see the hammer on the anvil and feel the choking heat, all around him, immolating him -

Throndir offers a hand. "Ephrim? You good?"

Ephrim blinks, shakes his head to clear it, and nods, willing his (left) hand to stop trembling as he accepts the help. "Yeah. Y-yeah, I just lost my balance." He laughs to clear the air, and Throndir frowns, but just helps him up and pats his shoulder carefully. The contact is strangely, welcomely cold.

It's not just that incident. Someone counts their remaining coin another night and he feels the  _plink plink_  hit with explosive force to his chest, his heart suddenly hammering against his bones, suddenly feels haunted. Another night they set up camp in the forest on the opposite side of Rosemerrow, because it's either take the low road or lose people going straight through the mountains, and oh, isn't it funny that the gusting wind, rattling the trees and battering tent walls, sounds like the whoosh of a billows at times? Ephrim tastes acrid dread in his mouth, grimacing humorlessly in his little cocoon, willing sleep to take him already. 

 

**fig. b.**

Oh, that's another thing. Once his brain's deemed Samothes so far away and so far gone he's no longer a  _real_ threat, it's started to chop up scenes from his memories and toss them together in a dream salad that makes no sense, and Ephrim can never remember the details of them, just remembers that it was all soaked with fear and revulsion and desperation, seeking answers that he never gets. They're always terrifying, and they're always a maelstrom of rich colors, swarming around him, suffocation, burning heat - a perfect circle of holy fire, burning him, flickering flames that'll reach out and pull him in and suddenly they're tendrils of tar-like Heat and the Dark wrapped around his wrists, purple miasma crawling off the liquid void and into his bones, seeping into him, until he's made of nothing but the Heat and the Dark and his own body, nearly transparent in his dreams, gives off that sickeningly vivid purple haze that claws into his chest and sits hollow, forms an iron core that bursts out of his chest but there's no blood - why would there be blood? He's already died -

\- the scene goes black, he floats, he can see the forge again, bird's eye view of writhing jewel hues that would crown him and burn him away and call him herald of the renaissance, and what if he reached out, what if he took this crown that was suddenly not a forge but a circlet the perfect size for him, what if he would just control his dream hands, reach out and close them around the molten ring and become His, what if, what if, come on Ephrim come on -

\- he's alone in the wintry plains between Rosemerrow and the Archives, Jeremy skulking at his back though he'll never see him. Ephrim squints into the icy blue-grey-black-white-purple blizzard for some kind of respite, but it's just him and the fire that'll burn him down to a stump one day - no, Samothes lifts him above the snowy vortex and embraces him warmly, Ephrim feels His warmth seep into him, but it won't warm his bones, just passes through him and coats his skin and he  _is_ the sun, he is light and everything is flat red, what's happening, the ground crumbles away into Nothing and Samothes lets go of him, pushes him from their perch in the sky and Ephrim tumbles with a shriek, plunges into the surrounding dark, instant and forever -

He can't bring himself to wear the color red lately.

 

**fig. c.**

More often than not, he feels himself detaching from physicality. Not in a literal sense, but he'll catch himself staring at a list of things that need to get done as soon as possible, because people are starving and people need shelter and people need to be kept alive and they're looking to him and Corsica for all the solutions - he'll check in on himself and realize he feels off-kilter, foggy, numb, alien. Like his conscious is floating slightly back-left from his body and a few inches above. He's on autopilot these days, and he'll take it, because boy does it ever beat constantly thinking about the smudgy orange-purple grief of his memories, clutching his sheets at 2 AM wrestling his lungs into breathing and feeling all too much, an obliterative flood of pain and panic and animal defense. Feeling too much always inevitably leaves him grouchy in the mornings, too, and he needs to build rapport in the communities he's leading, in the communities he's not directly responsible for, it's important for them to want to work with him, so he'd rather take the numb fog than be someone's tipping point and find that they've taken most of his allies with them on their way out.

But the dreams keep coming. So instead of crying in the dark, pain and panic and wild desperation, all alone in his room, he steels himself and goes for a walk.

Bri is out at this time of night, and so is Throndir, surprised to see Ephrim at the top of the watchtower but gesturing for him to sit beside him on a stool. "Hey." His breath puffs neat clouds into the dark. "What's up?"

"Hey." Ephrim rubs at his eyes, paranoid he's telegraphing how obviously ruined he is. "I just - long night. Couldn't sleep."

Throndir, again, has that look that tells Ephrim he knows there's deeper problems, but just nods, humming in empathy. "You wanna talk about it? I mean. You don't have to. But if it'd make you feel better -" He falls silent, studying Ephrim, chewing on his lip.

Throndir's eyes hold no anticipation, judgement, or ulterior motive, whatever that may be, and Ephrim feels the words well up in him, beading at the edges of this reopening wound. "I - yeah." He sighs. "Yeah. I just..."

Throndir nods. "You can take your time."

Ephrim searches for the right words, the right place to start, and soon the droplets are rivulets, pouring from his mouth, spilling, a cascading river with no estuary. "I... I'm kind of dreading doing services in the morning, you know? And - you know. Well, I dunno if you do, but I - I've been having bad dreams, and I guess that's why I don't wanna do services, because they're all connected, in a way - you remember the New Archives, a while ago, when I put together the sword parts we had? And I just kinda - I guess it looked like I stood there, but I - when I came back there was blood on the sword -" His throat sticks dry on the words. It feels unreal, for some reason, he is here sitting with Throndir on a cool night and he isn't quite here, he still feels the forge all around him, pressing in.

"Yeah." Throndir is steady. "I remember that."

"I..." He squeezes his eyes shut, sees the green lights dancing behind his lids. Out with it, Ephrim. Get it out. "I killed Samothes." If there's enough silence, he'll digest it and might turn against you - "He - he hasn't been around, because he's been at the bottom of the earth getting rid of all the suns and it turns out my whole  _life_ is a lie, because he wanted me to help him turn everything into the Heat and the Dark and I - that's not Samothes, he's not real, that's not what I thought Samothes was about, my whole life, or my fire powers - and they aren't even  _mine,_ Throndir, he just saw a tool in me so he - a fake god could give me powers and use me and lie to me and I just - I couldn't - god, I killed him and he was - at the end - fuck, Throndir. Fuck." He's shaking, tears tracking hot then cold down his cheeks, and Throndir wordlessly offers his hands and Ephrim clutches at them with his good hand, his other in a careful contortion of emotional non-contact. Throndir's eyes are full of empathetic pain and sadness, and somehow that makes it worse, because he's never confided this in anyone, has never expected to be believed and supported. The compassion is so alien it overwhelms, and Ephrim just sits there and shakes, Throndir's touch grounding and cool, aching with the loss Samothes had planted in him.

More words bubble up in him, though, and he has to get them out while they're still offering themselves up. His voice is a hoarse whisper, but he's past caring how he must look. "And I just haven't been myself since, and I hate it - I feel like a fucking mess and I can't run the University, I have no idea what I'm doing and everyone needs me to be a perfect leader and I'm  _nothing_ like that. I don't - my head doesn't feel like it's on right and I can't... do anything about it."

Throndir nods, slowly, attentively, and furrows his brow into the silence. "Um... if you don't mind me asking - you don't have to answer, of course. But, um... is your - right hand okay?"

Ephrim sighs, calming. "You uh - you know what happened with Arrell's chin?" Something flares in Throndir's green eyes, tightens the grim corners of his mouth, but he nods silently. "That's been happening to my hand."

Silence.

"How bad?" Throndir asks softly.

Ephrim exhales, a plume of mist. "My hand is - gone. Wrist - wristbone-down. It's just Nothing."

Silence, interminable.

"And - is there a way to -?"

Ephrim shakes his head, strangely cold and calm and incredibly present for once. "I'm dying. As far as I know, I can't change that."

Throndir's mind is obviously working. "I - there must be  _something_ _._ Maybe the Archives has something, any kind of information -"

"Throndir, I'm tired. I just - I can't think about it right now. Later."

"Okay. Okay." Throndir sighs, suddenly looking drawn and sorrowful. Ephrim feels a pang of guilt for ruining his night, but Throndir is talking again, leaning in, meeting Ephrim's eyes. "For what it's worth, I - I think you're doing amazing. You're running a whole settlement, you and Corsica, and even if you might feel like people can tell you're floundering, I - most of the time, we really can't. You're doing so much better than you think you are, I couldn't imagine doing  _your_ job. And you work really hard - you  _should_ be able to take breaks! It's not healthy to wear yourself down."

Ephrim grins, dry, faint. "I mean, I _am_ dying anyway - what's it gonna do, kill me faster?"

Throndir laughs in surprise, pained. "Oh man, please, don't - I don't wanna have to think about that, it's upsetting. I just - Ephrim. It's okay to ask for help, it's okay to take some time off. If you don't want to do services tomorrow, maybe - ask Rosana, or somebody? You don't have to force yourself to do things that hurt you."

Ephrim takes a deep breath. And another. And he nods. "Yeah, I - I mean. I still have to try. But I will. Thank you."

Throndir's smile warms him. "Any time. And, uh... thanks for trusting me, I'll make sure no one knows if you don't want them to." They're still holding hands, and Throndir looks out at the night sky. "Maybe sometime when you're feeling up to it, I'll... I'll let you in on one of my secrets."

Ephrim glances at him. "You have a secret?"

Throndir's mouth is a taut slash. He stares ahead, ears flicking nervously. "And, uh, things I've bottled up for a while. I mean - it's nothing that'll harm the community. I promise. I just... haven't been able to tell anyone else."

"Okay." Ephrim leans into him, suddenly exhausted. "I... thanks." Throndir relaxes against him, and the moon washes them in faint light. Soon the sun will rise, but that's not a problem for here or now.

 

**fig. d.**

He does services and the words are ash smeared on his tongue, the paltry faith and vaguely-religious reassurances he can muster are loose featherdown, barely enough to warm. But he gets through another one, and another one. And another one.

The days get longer. Softer.

 

**conclusion.**

He hears the forge again, ringing in tandem with the pulsing growth of the tree. He doesn't respond to its call, not immediately - he has things to do. He has a university to manage, rearranging resources to fit this wave of refugees into the only safe haven they know, he has a god-king in a bed recovering from the brink of death, the forge has to wait. He steels himself against the hammering, and the  _whoosh, clink_ fades into the background as he takes Samot up on his invitation to talk.

It returns when he goes back to the tree, and while he's done admirably wrestling his brain into submission - doesn't jerk back to the forge at the sound of coins, hasn't had the dreams in a while (he has different dreams, when he does at all), he's still here and the world is still bright, vivid, real, even painfully so, but that's alright - his brain still has misfires, so he almost doesn't believe it when he actually finds himself there.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, gut seizing in old panic. He's part himself, Lord Ephrim who's in charge of this settlement he's brought to some kind of stability, but he wears his old self like a clammy film, he's both his current self and his old self, facing down Samothes in this darkly saturated pocket realm, if he turns his head his cape collar will tickle his cheek, if he reaches out he'll have a bladed inferno in his hand -

It's not Samothes. It's Alyosha, and his crawling labyrinth of flora. And yes, the hammer still drives nails into his chest, but he still has enough of his graces left to make his way through the conversation and leave without things going ugly. The daisy sits in his shirt pocket, petals fluttering as he moves, and he feels strangely weightless as he leaves the dark and chaos and blood and pressure behind, sunlight kissing his face again. He made it. He went back, he survived, he isn't a trembling haunted mess who left part of himself in the worst place of his life.

Sure, things are still kind of shit up aboveground, and now there's more cause for isolation and paranoia but look - at least he _has_ friends, allies, at least people have solutions, at least people are here with him and getting involved and making this collective community's ship seaworthy the best they can. And that buoys him. He's caulked his gaps and his heart does not hammer, but thrums, maybe still feeling remnants of Samol's song. It hums in color, it hums in connections, it hums pink and red and green and yellow and blue and purple and it hums steady. He is here. He is here, with the mess and the weaving connections and the lives that refuse to be stamped out. And he had better be ready to go forward with them all.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!! if you ever want to chat im @rowanhighwater on twitter


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